Communications systems with call centers are known. Such systems are typically used as a means of distributing telephone calls among a group of call center agents of an organization. As calls are directed to the organization from the public switch telephone network (PSTN), the communications system directs the calls to its call center agents based upon some algorithm. For example, a communications system such as an automatic call distributor (ACD), a public branch exchange (PBX), or a central office exchange service (centrex) may recognize a call target based upon an identity of an incoming trunk line and route the call accordingly.
In call centers where many calls are received and handled by many call center agents, the call center may contain a large number of agents. Agents are responsible for servicing customers. Call center agents may provide product support, take sales orders, and handle inquires. In essence, the call center agents provide the wide array of services that the companies that use them require. Thus, the effectiveness and efficiency of a call center depends on the call center agents. Call center supervisors manage call center agents, including scheduling their tasks and duties, and are responsible for monitoring their whereabouts.
To manage the call center efficiently, it is important for a call center supervisor to have ready access to the location of the call center agents. Currently, monitoring of the call center is performed manually by a paper or electronic floor plan image of the call center depicting the consoles that the agents sit at. To monitor the whereabouts of agents, tags representing agents are placed on the floor plan in the console position occupied by the agent.
Such manual solutions may be inaccurate and may misrepresent an agent's physical location. For example, many call centers operate in hotdesking mode where agents sit at different seats according to availability and preference on a shift by shift basis. Thus, the floor plan may not represent the current agent and console locations. When an agent moves from one console to another, the call center supervisor must make note of the change by moving the tag representing the agent either on the paper or electronic floor plan. This requires the supervisor to constantly update the floor plan. If the supervisor looses track of agent positions, then some consoles identified as occupied may be mismarked. By not adequately tracking agents or consoles, the call center becomes underutilized and inefficient. Also, by being unaware of agents' whereabouts, the call center supervisor is unable to estimate the call center's capability.
Further, even if the supervisor where to maintain an accurate floor plan, the supervisor is not able to reassign agents and make other configuration changes from the supervisor's desk. The supervisor must physically walk over to an agent's console and re-assign or re-configure the agent's console. Having the supervisor walk to each agent's console and perform the necessary changes is time consuming and inefficient.
The existing method of monitoring physical locations of call center agents and consoles of communications systems requires the supervisor to manually track agents and consoles. As a consequence, many agents may be undetected or many unused consoles may be unused, and thereby, the quality of service provided by the call center may degrade. Further, the supervisor must physically walk to each and every console to perform the necessary changes to console configuration so that the call center is optimally performing. Accordingly, a need exists for a better way of changing agent and console information while automatically monitoring and displaying such information in a call center.